General Motors manufactured around 200,000 Chevrolet Cobalt cars every year between 2003 and 2010 even after it had identified defects in the ignition switches of these cars. The ignition switches supplied to GM by Delphi Automotive Systems had problems which stalled or completely turned off the car when nudged or when the car went over bumps. By February 2014, these cars was the cause of accidents which resulted in 13 deaths and recalls of these defective cars by GM which have now totaled to 2.2 million in the US and 2.6 million worldwide.
In 2001, General Motors had detected a problem in the new ignition switches in their 2003 Saturn Ion model during the pre-production tests. But the report suggests that the problem was fixed by a slight change. Delphi Automotive also claims that the ignition switches were approved by GM even though the ignition switches did not meet the specifications requested by GM. During 2003, dealers of General Motors received complaints of cars turning off or stalling. By December 2004, GM had opened up an inquiry on the problem of the ignition switches, which was the common issue in the many complaints received over the past year. However simultaneously, GM started production for the Chevrolet Cobalt 2005 which was GM’s new fuel-efficient compact sedan and having the same defected ignition switches.
On July 29, 2005; Amber Marie Rose of Maryland lost control of new Chevrolet Cobalt 2005 model and died after the car hit a tree. Even though investigation proved that alcohol and speeding were the main cause of the accident, the Cobalt did not deploy the safety air bags after the car hit the tree. The ignition switch of the car was in accessory mode which prevents the deployment of safety air bags. In this ...
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...es between GM and NHTSA employees to influence the verdicts of the administration on the safety of the ignition switches. All the parties may also be held responsible for the accidents if proven that the enterprises withheld or hid information regarding the reliability and safety of the ignition switches.
However, it has already been concluded that several people involved in the management of GM and engineers were aware of the danger or defect of the ignition switches in the vehicles being manufactured by their corporation. GM engineers as well as Delphi Automotive employees were also in knowledge of the shortcomings of the ignition switches from the specifications provided by General Motors. Therefore, GM employees are heading towards serious criminal sanctions for their negligence towards their duty for being responsible for producing safe products to the public.
This design defect, however, does not mean that the plaintiff is awarded since the design defect was not the proximate cause of injury for Cheyenne. Due to Gordon’s modification of the seat belt, Ford is not liable for the injuries that Cheyenne suffered. Stark ex. rel. Jacobsen v. Ford Motor Co., 365 N.C. 468, 472, 723 S.E.2d 753, 756 (2012). The evidence supports the idea that her spinal cord injury was a direct result of placing the seat belt behind her back. Preemption as a theory that would bar the Starks from recovering does not apply in this case, since the federal government’s regulations do not make manufacturers immune to design defect claims. Stark’s claims of inadequate warnings likewise do not apply since the misuse of the product, it’s alteration, is the proximate cause of injury. Had the modification of the seat belt not been the proximate cause of injury, and instead a contributing factor, the court might have decided that Stark was only twenty percent responsible for the injury that occurred. This amount of contributory negligence would not have barred them from recovering, according to Indiana Statutes, and Ford would have been liable for the
The theories in which I base my decision on are res ipsa loquitor and negligence per se. Res ipsa loquitor means that “it creates a presumption that the defendant was negligent because he or she was in exclusive control of the situation and that the plaintiff would not have suffered an Injury”. Negligence per se means “an act of the defendant that violates a statute regulation or ordinance can be used to establish a breach of the duty of due care” (Mayer et al,. 2014, p. 163). Therefore, the injuries of the Prius driver and the people at the train station, I believe that George is at fault of negligence, because of negligence, carelessness and is foreseeable. Now as for the sparks from the wiring caught that lead to the other chain of events. I feel that George should not be held accountable for negligence, because it was unforeseeable. He could not prevent that it can cause a barn to explode and setting forth a series of
General Motors is a long established corporation, which has had a profound affect on the American people and the American economy. The corporation has prided themselves on producing automobiles at the lowest cost, while remaining a style leader of the industry. Bankruptcy with a government buy out in 2009 caused reorganization, a battle to transform, reinventing a new GM corporate culture. In 2014, Generals Motors topped the list as one of the nine most damaged brands. What caused General Motors to get such a tarnished reputation, was it a scandal-laden culture and mismanagement, putting profit over safety with massive cover-ups, or a combination of both?
...rranted extensive tests for internal controls. This is an extreme example of what can happen when internal controls are fraudulently engineered by those skilled in scrutinizing them.
General Motors has made great progress towards diversity however, it took the lawsuit in order for the company to do so. Adding females and minority to the upper management. Had the HR department of General Motors followed the EEOC regulations, this lawsuit could have been avoided.
fault, and say that it is the fault of the operator? Engineers must be careful
Who fault is it when a driverless car gets into an accident? Google is the primary car and vehicle creators, and the government’s actions both in the U.S. and overseas are spending nearly billions of dollars to care the growth of the vehicle technology with the possible to make highway travel way more harmless than it is nowadays. How does someone apportion blame between a vehicle’s mechanical systems and an actual human driver? Is it the software the blame for the accident or was it the hardware? These sorts of problems have led to proposals that liability will be a problem when these driverless cars are released to the public.
Automobiles have been around for well over a century now. I think the most impressive thing about cars in today’s world is the safety features that come with the cars. Think about how much testing goes into making one car. There is seriously so many things that companies have to take into consideration when building a new automobile to assure that it is safe enough for the consumers.
Compared to others in its class, the Ford Pinto was an average performing vehicle; there was nothing astonishing about the car, good or bad. Ford’s actions regarding the Pinto’s development and release were not unique. From an engineering standpoint, Ford fulfilled the car’s purpose; a fuel efficient, subcompact vehicle which the public could afford. The media frenzy which followed the Pinto was an exploitation of the separation between public opinion and the hidden standards and processes behind design liability. It’s difficult to imagine any company being able to convince the public that the math makes sense; Ford had the deck stacked against them from the beginning.
Did you know that seat belts save over 13,000 lives each year, according to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration). In an accident seat belts are usually the difference between life or death. The NHTSA estimates that over 7,000 lives could be saved if the victims had used their seat belts. There are also many other safety features of a car, like the airbags, zones, and even padded dashboards. Car safety is very important in our everyday lives, and there needs to be more awareness about the effects of not being safe in a car.
Entering the 1950s, no corporation even came close to General Motors in its size, or it's profits. GM was twice as big as the second biggest company in the world, Standard Oil of New Jersey (father of today's ExxonMobil), and had a vast diversity of businesses ranging from home appliances to providing insurance and building Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevys, GMCs, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs and trains. It was so big that it made more than half the cars sold in the United States and the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division was threatening to break it up(to prevent Monopolies, Like how Standard oil was broken up). In the 21st century, it's almost hard to imagine how powerful GM was in the 50s and 60s.Sports cars from Europe were getting popular, because of servicemen coming back from WWII, and wanted sports cars, but American Automakers didn't make sports cars, so they would either buy foreign, or go without. A man named McLean would still try to make a low priced sports car. But it didn't work. The idea of a car coming from GM that could compete with Jaguar, MG or Triumph was pretty much considered stupid and insane. C1:Generation: Bad but valuable. Just 300 Corvettes were made in 1953. Each of these first-year Corvettes was a white roadster with red interior. The Corvette was made of fiberglass for light weight, but the first cars were made with a really weak, (and kind of pathetic for a “sports car”) 150 horsepower 6-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. The result was more of a look at me, I’m rich car than a race car. The first generation of the Corvette was introduced late in 1953. It was originally designed as a show car for GM's traveling car show, Motorama, the Corvette was a Show Car for the 1953 Motorama display at...
Ford determined that the overall cost greatly outweighed the benefits and decided against making any safety improvements. This decision resulted in numerous fire-related deaths to occur between 1971 and 1978; sworn testimony by Ford engineers stated that 95% of these fatalities could have been avoided if Ford had simply altered the location of the fuel tank. (Case: The Ford Pinto,
Tesla Motors Inc. is an American public company which is known worldwide because of its experience in designing, manufacturing and also the selling of electric cars and electric components for vehicles. The motor was started back in the year 2003 in San Carlos, California in the United States (Teslamotors.com, 2014). The company had its headquarters in Palo Alto and at the time of its inception, Elon Musk was its chief executive officer (CEO) (Hunger, 2010).
In 2015 17.4 million vehicles were sold in the U.S. and 9.8 million of those were cars and trucks manufactured by General Motors (Automotive Industry Spotlight, 2016).
Since the probe, General Motors had created a new post that is charged with responsibility for vehicle safety (Muller, 2013). General Motors terminated sixteen people for their role in not repairing the faulty ignition switch. The mindset throughout General Motors was to retain the bad news and keep it apart from senior supervisors. This was undeviatingly contributed to no effort being taken to remedy the faulty switch. Because of this, General Motors is directly accountable for the graves of 13